Listen to ACFP’s Founder Bronwyn Kelly’s new interview with Julian Cribb from the Council for the Human Future about the rights we need if we are to provide a safe future on this planet for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren.
Our need for human rights
Every human being alive today is facing the prospect of extinction. Our species is suffering from climate change, ecological collapses, toxic pollution, corporate exploitation of limited resources, and possible nuclear war. It’s a polycrisis that we have not yet organised ourselves to head off or control.
To overcome this we need to claim our human rights in law, particularly the right to a safe and healthy environment.
Australians don’t have human rights in domestic law. This must change or we may have no future at all.
Two key rights
In this interview, Bronwyn Kelly and Julian Cribb talk about two vital rights we need. These are rights that nobody in the world has yet:
the right to participate in setting the long term direction of the country - that is, a right to a voice in our own governance; and
the right not to be poisoned.
Find out more about how Australians can begin to establish these life-changing rights for themselves and future generations:
Find out about the Earth System Treaty and how it is essential to our survival. Sign the petition calling on the United Nations to adopt the Earth System Treaty.
Find out how everyday Australians can increase their influence with governments by becoming involved in developing a plan of the safe paths to a sustainable future - Australia Together - and presenting that to governments as an agenda essential to our survival.
Australia was one of the main countries that pushed for human rights when they were first established. It’s a deep irony that we haven’t implemented them in Australia. This country was a proud evangelist for human rights back in the forties and fifties. We seem to have forgotten that.
But if Australia was to espouse a right not to be poisoned it would put us back in the game of developing human rights that will secure our future.
Julian Cribb
Increasing our influence with governments
It is essential to human survival on this planet that all governments re-affirm their commitment to plans already adopted at the United Nations, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. These plans have significant potential to save humanity. But they are not being attended to by nation states, especially in developed countries.
Citizens in all countries need to press their governments to act in accordance with these plans. Australia Together provides a mechanism by which Australians can influence and support governments to cooperate with other countries for the benefit of every human being.
Become involved in the process of building Australia Together, the nation’s first long term, integrated plan for a better future.
Comment and provide suggestions about Australia Together here and here.
Want to know more about Australia Together?
Australia Together is the nation’s first community designed and driven long term, integrated plan for a better future. It’s designed to help Australians make the best future we can imagine in the 2020s a reality by 2050 or sooner.
Browse the latest Issue of Australia Together - Issue No. 8 - here.
Up next on the Australia Together Podcast:
Restoring universal health care in Australia: Interviewing Ian McAuley on the decline of Australia’s health care system and how we can restore it.
Episode 53: The rights we need.